Monday, June 18, 2012

Colfax home to $500m of developments

Playboy magazine once described Colfax Avenue as
the nation’s “longest, most wicked street.”

Colfax, named after Schuyler Colfax, the
nation’s 17th vice president under President Ulysses S. Grant, is 26 miles
long, a marathon-like distance.

In Denver,
the long-await­ed rebirth of Colfax is defi­nitely a marathon, not a sprint.

Yet, development along the corridor is gaining speed
rapidly.

More
than $500 million in developments were recently completed, are under way or
soon to be started along Colfax in Denver.

More
than 120 people recently attended a half-day ULI Colorado panel dis­cussion and
bus tour titled “Reinventing Colfax: Wicked No More.” The event, on May 10, was
part of the ULI Colorado’s Explorer series.

“It’s 26 miles of nothing but edge,” Brad Buchanan,
an architect with RNL Design, said at the panel discussion at Fillmore Plaza,
before the group boarded two buses for a tour of about 12 miles of Colfax.

“Due to changing demo­graphics, innovative
devel­opment, new zoning and long-term support from the city of Denver, there
is a new Colfax evolving, with $100 million in development and improvements
along the cor­ridor, and $500 million in the pipeline,” according to ULI
Colorado.

It described Colfax as the “state’s hottest
corridor for retail leasing and new mixed-use, institutional, civic and
infrastructure proj­ects abound. The result is a national success story in main
street revitalization.”

Hilarie Portell,
the execu­tive director of The Fax Partnership, which takes its name from ‘Fax,
short­hand for East Colfax Avenue,
first pitched the idea to ULI Colorado. The partnership represents the stretch
of East Colfax from Colorado
Boulevard to Yosemite Street.

She and
representatives from three other geograph­ic areas along Colfax high­lighted a
number of devel­opments along the corridor during the bus tour.

“We organized
this event to show that Denver’s
main street is alive and well despite the Great Recession,” Portell said. “It
hasn’t been overnight, but it’s happen­ing, block by block, all along Colfax.
There’s a lot of new development in the pipe­line and more opportunities
available.”

Portell gathered
facts and figures along Colfax that showed:

• There are more than 1,000 businesses on Colfax.

• More than 6,000 people work along Colfax.

• Employers include inde­pendent store, national retail­ers
and large institutional companies.

• Colfax has always been a small-business incubator for Denver. Most locally
owned businesses on the corridor have three to five employees.

• Some 100 new businesses opened in 2011 along Colfax,
creating more than 300 jobs.

• Crime is down 36 percent along East Colfax Avenue from its peak in 1996.

More than $66
million in new development and build­ing renovations have been completed in the
past two years along Colfax, includ­ing:

• ACE Hardware,

• Bubba Chinos Restaurant,

• The Denver
Film Society,

• GB Fish & Chips,

• Jett Asian Grill,

• John
Hand Building,

• Marczyk’s Fine Foods,

• National Trust for Historic Preservation,

• Phoenix
on the Fax mixed-use development and

• Renaissance Uptown Lofts.

There
is another $434.4 million in new developments in the pipeline, which will
require an estimated $86.5 million in infrastructure improvements.

Developments
highlight­ed on the bus tour include the National Jewish Health expansion, the
redevelop­ment of the 19-acre former St.
Anthony Hospital
site on West Colfax and a new Sunflower Market on East Colfax. The group toured
the Phoenix on
the Fax Apartments at 7101 E.
Colfax Ave., a 50-unit, subsidized apartment
building with 4,500 square feet of ground-floor retail space. Sherman
Associates developed it. At the west side of Colfax, a pre­sentation was given
at the St. Anthony Hospital
site.

Retail, which follows roof­tops, is an important compo­nent
of the rebirth of Colfax.

“As the
Colfax corridor continues its dynamic transi­tion, it is attracting national
retailers who now see it as a more viable opportunity,” said Katy Press, retail
con­sultant with KP & Associates and one of the panel mem­bers.

“In fact, attitudes toward Colfax have shifted
so much that it is now a focus area for retailers like restaurants, gro­cers,
and home and garden stores.”

However, she said Colfax still presents
challenges to retailers, which she noted are increasingly “risk-averse” since
the recession.

“There are retail opportu­nities and
challenges,” she said. “It is quasi-urban.”

Press said retailers under­stand urban, such
as in downtown Denver,
and understand suburban, but have trouble getting their hands around Colfax.

“Some
retailers just do not get Colfax,” Press said. Others do.

She called the new Sunflower Market on East
Colfax a “game changer” and said young, aggressive retail­ers such as
Smashburger and Mad Greens “get it. Colfax is the No. 1 corridor for retail. It
is a hot retail cor­ridor. Retailers like the traf­fic, like the density. I
have never met a retailer who has complained about having too much density or
too much traffic.”

Many of
the developments along Colfax are public-pri­vate partnerships.

“Colfax
is the baseline for what works and what didn’t work,” said another panel
member, John Lucero, deputy director for Denver’s
Office of Economic Development.

Lucero said that city gets a big bang for its
buck by leveraging dollars it invests along Colfax.

For example,
his office invested $6 million on West Colfax that has helped jump-start $50
million in projects and invested $6 million near Colorado Boulevard that will result in
$60 million in pri­vate investments.

Buchanan
said some peo­ple thought that Colfax, once the haunt of the wealthiest gold
and silver barons of Denver,
would be impossible to reclaim and reform its rep­utation as a wicked stretch.

“Colfax is stress and strain. It has
weaknesses and oppor­tunities,” Buchanan said. “I remember that Jennifer
Moulton (Denver’s
first woman city planning direc­tor, who died in 2003) used to say that Colfax Avenue is a
messy place – deal with it.”

Today,
developers, retailers and city officials are not only dealing with Colfax, they
are transforming it.

“To
understand its poten­tial, we have to understand its past,” Buchanan said. “I
believe Colfax still has a great deal of untapped potential.”